'It's changed me'

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, September 22, 2005

Working in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina left Midlander Kip Moe with a new appreciation for daily life, and more compassion while on the job.

Moe, an officer with the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Police Department for four years, was part of a group of Michigan law enforcement officers who drove south to help in early September. Michigan State Police troopers, sheriffs deputies from various counties and police officers all were part of the group.

Moe and three others from his department  Sgt. Jerry Smith and officers Craig Wilson and Jeremy Wilkins  went to the state police academy in Lansing for a briefing, then hit the road. They stayed in Baton Rouge, La., and commuted about 1 1/2 hours every morning to New Orleans, Moe said.

They were divided into strike teams, accompanied by Louisiana State Police troopers, They went door to door looking for people who wanted to leave and marked the bodies that they found.

"You would walk for 5 or 6 miles till you cleared the grid," he said, sitting on a couch at his home Thursday watching TV news coverage of Hurricane Rita. "The smell would come across the Lake Pontchartrain causeway, and it was as if somebody slapped you in the face." The mixture contained sewage, trash and flesh.

He divides the people he met there into two groups  those happy to see help coming, and those who were not. "They were glad you were there and happy you checked on them," he said of the first division, adding the second didnt want the law enforcement officials to hang around for long.

The desperate situation showed itself in numerous ways and the destructive power of the storm was obvious, he said.

One man had sent his family away and didnt want to leave their home.

"He wasnt leaving because everything he had in his 68 years was in that tiny house," Moe said. "I was sad. I honestly believed everything he had in his life, other than his family, was in that house."

Another woman was in condos near the rally point for officials, but no one had sent them to check there yet. When a team arrived, it found the woman with her things packed up and ready to go, asking what had taken them so long to come get her. Moe explained the last thing the residents heard from officials was to stay put until they were rescued, so thats what the woman had done.

While walking and driving, he passed water marks above doors and windows, vehicles pushed up against buildings and light poles, animal carcasses in trees and on top of high fences, human bodies, parks covered by water, and abandoned personal watercraft in the middle of town.

"It was the little things that you notice," he said, remembering a parking lot where all the vehicles gas tanks were open because people had siphoned out the gas for their own vehicles to leave.

Officials there didnt escape the destruction, fear and uncertainty brought by Hurricane Katrina.

Moe said one trooper lost a grandmother in a nursing home, while another lost his home and sent his family elsewhere to live while he worked. On top of that, the work lasts up to 16 hours each day, with no days off, taking a toll on hometown law enforcement teams.

"Thats why it felt so good to go down there," Moe said. "It had to be done, thats what we needed to do.

"Its changed me as a police officer and a person," he added, noting coming home was bittersweet because he had a home to come to while so many do not. Rather than just being part of a daily routine, now reading the paper and watching the news have meaning, and the smells of home and his own bed, couch and TV are something to appreciate.

"Going down and helping out will probably be the benchmark of my career."